Why Labour should be more worried about Ukip’s leadership battle than its own

Frank Field, the Labour MP, says his party lost one million votes to Ukip at the 2015 general election and they could be set to lose more following Brexit

Our unfair first-post-the-system gave Ukip only one seat last year, but it can still affect the result in many constituencies (Getty)

Is the party over for Ukip? Its mission was accomplished with the vote for Brexit. Its vote in council by-elections has dropped by 10 per cent since. Its parlous finances will be worsened when its 24 MEPs lose their jobs and allowances.

Nigel Farage has resigned (again). Can Ukip survive without him? Love him or hate him, he is an A-lister. He forced David Cameron to hold the referendum and many voters bought the argument he made first: the only way to control immigration was to leave the EU. He doesn’t claim he won the referendum alone, admitting that he needed Boris Johnson to appeal to a different segment of the electorate.

Farage’s resignation has sparked a civil war inside Ukip (again) just when, with Labour in disarray, there was a chance for Ukip to build on its referendum success. For a small party, the scale of the faction-fighting is remarkable: Steven Woolfe, Farage’s favoured successor, was barred from the leadership election for applying 17 minutes late in an alleged stitch-up by anti-Farage forces. Woolfe is now trying to overturn the decision.

Ukip may again be living up to David Cameron’s billing as “loonies, fruitcakes, closet racists” and some Labour and Conservative MPs think it is a busted flush. Yet Ukip can still shape the political landscape. It won four million votes at last year’s general election. If the Scottish nationalists can reduce Labour to just one seat in its Scottish heartland, why can’t Ukip’s English nationalists do the same in England?

Our unfair first-post-the-system gave Ukip only one seat last year, but it can still affect the result in many constituencies. Ukip came second in 120 and won more votes than the size of the Tory majority in nine seats the Conservatives gained from Labour – including Ed Balls’s Morley and Outwood seat. Ukip showed it can Hoover up anti-Conservative votes: in 48 seats retained by the Tories, its majority over Labour was lower than the number of votes won by Ukip.

In the referendum, a majority of voters in about 160 Labour-held seats backed Leave, while only about 70 backed Remain. As less than a dozen Labour MPs voted Leave, Ukip could put plenty of Labour MPs under pressure.

Labour has consistently underestimated the Ukip threat, preferring to see it as a Tory problem. The Labour leadership assumed the party’s traditional supporters had nowhere else to go – the same mistake it made in Scotland. Frank Field, the Labour MP, says his party lost one million votes to Ukip at the 2015 election and could do the same again next time. With hindsight, the warning signs for the referendum were there: people feeling “left behind” since the 2008 financial crisis and ready to stick two figures up tat the establishment.

Theresa May’s allies say she believes that the referendum result was “not just about the EU” and she has made struggling working class families her priority. But the Prime Minister’s ability to transform lives will be constrained by the economic downside of Brexit. So that pool of alienated voters could still be there at the next general election.

Ukip’s new role could be ensuring that May does not backslide on Brexit. But she knows she cannot ignore the referendum. Yes, there might be a debate between a “hard” and “soft” Brexit but most Leave voters will be happy enough if it happens and won’t pore over the detail. May will need to reassure such people that free movement has been curbed but her instincts on immigration are tougher than David Cameron’s and she might persuade some Ukip supporters to “come home” to the Tories.

If Ukip survives, its main threat will be to Labour, whose leader Jeremy Corbyn has no appetite to address white working class anxieties about immigration. And if Ukip self-destructs or struggles to find a role in the post-referendum world, that would help the Conservatives. Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent, whose predictions about Ukip’s threat to Labour have proved accurate, calculates that if May wins more than half the 13 per cent of people who backed Ukip last year, Labour could lose 44 marginal seats to the Tories at the next election.

So Ukip’s leadership election matters, even if the candidates are B-listers following the demise of Woolfe and Suzanne Evans, who was suspended from the party after falling foul of the Farage camp. The front-runner is Diane James, an MEP and Farage loyalist, who is up against Lisa Duffy, a councillor with strong grassroots backing; Bill Etheridge, another MEP; Philip Broughton, a former wrestler and Liz Jones, a solicitor and activist in Lambeth.

Farage says he has done his bit and wants his life back but may not be out of the picture for long. If it all went pear-shaped under a new leader, he might be persuaded to come back (again).

The other scenario, much discussed in Ukip circles, is the creation of a new, internet-based movement by Arron Banks, the millionaire Ukip donor and Leave campaigner. It would be modelled on Italy’s successful Five Star Movement launched by the comedian Beppe Grillo.

Farage might be president or chairman even if he were not the leader, and it could supplant Ukip. I suspect we have not seen the last of Farage. The UK’s version of Grillo has had the last laugh once, and might yet do so one more time.